I woke this morning thinking about re-reading The Lord of the Rings. The last
stab at the thick volume I made while at Oxford in 2008. A childhood friend
reads the entire thing on an annual basis. Which brings me around to another
question. If I examine the entirety of my library and was given the choice of
only a select few books to read and re-read for eternity which volumes would
that entail? It is said that the quality of a litrary work is measured in our
ability to glean something anew from each reading.

Certainly there are many a book and a film that has touched and moved me greatly
and yet, I would not go back and read it again. Honey & Clover, for example,
was paramount in my decision leave DigiPen for Augustana. Yet, in rewatching, it
has never recaptured the same motive power.

This list then is a kind of “desert island list.” A list of works so profound
that if restricted to only those works on a deserted island I could potentially
get by. It is also the list of works that I could potentially see myself reading
and re-reading every five years into my geriatry.

Books (Novels, Short Story, and Graphic Novels)

The novel is an easy one to figure out. Which volumes have I returned to time
and again? Some of have certainly fallen off the list. C.S. Lewis was wonderous
as a child but what once seemed like playful allegory now feels too much like a
club.

The Classics

Beowulf translated by Seamus Heaney

The Odyssey by Homer

Gilgamesh

The Holy Bible

The Modern Fantasy

The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien

The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien

The Silmarillion or The History of Middle Earth by JRR Tolkien

The Works of Lovecraft

Dune by Frank Herbert

The Dungeons & Dragons Rulebooks (AD&D, 3rd, and 5th Editions)

The Graphic Novel

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind by Hayao Miyazaki

Solanin by Inio Asano

The Literary Books

On the Road by Jack Kuroac

Child’s Play by Ichiyo Higuchi

Snow Country and Thousand Cranes by Yatsunari Kawabata

Philosophy

What is worth re-reading in Philosophy is far too long of a list. I submit instead
those volumes from my undergrad that I find worth returning to as they provide a
rather sound foundation for further reading.

The Complete Works of Plato

Nichomachean Ethics by Artistotle

Confessions by St. Augustine

Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas

Meditations on First Philosophy by Descartes

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by Locke

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by Hume

Critque of Pure Reason by Kant

Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics by Kant

The Phenomonology of Spirit by Hegel

Fear & Trembling by Kierkegaard

The Portable Nietzche

Being & Nothing by Sartre

The Rebel and The Myth of Sisyphus by Camus

Film & Television

Rarely do I return to a film and almost never teleivison. A handful are
regulars, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, and Labyrinth where all
watched repeatedly in my youth. The collected works of Miyazaki, Kirasawa
and Satoshi Kon are all revisited on occassion. A handful of anime I would
like to take the time to rewatch as they were all very formative in my youth.
Yet, how well they would stand up on a rewatching remains unknown.

Anime & Television

Cowboy Bebop

Samuarai X

FLCL

Serial Experiments Lain

Mushishi

Kino no Tabi

Red Dwarf

The Twilight Zone

Games

The vast majority of games have no narrative arc. How can I return to Counter
Strike? When I examine narrative single player games though, I find myself going
back to Miyamoto’s early games: Mario and Zelda. Few titles from that era
held up with age, and fewer modern titles are worth a second look. Yet, I must
admit that I have probably gone back to re-play none of these games in the last
decade.

Super Mario I, II, and III

Super Mario: Yoshii’s Island

Super Mario 64

Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars

The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past or Link’s Awakening

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Chrono Cross

Shadow of Collossus

Ico

Honorable Mentions

There are a few volumes that I have read multiple times, but upon later reading
in life, I do not feel the same spark and will probably not return:

About

Joseph Hallenbeck attended the RTIS program at DigiPen Institute of Technology, studied Victorian-era literature at the University of Oxford, and graduated from Augustana University in Sioux Falls, SD with a B.A. in Philosophy and English Literature. He has worked as an interpretive ranger, naturalist, and caver for the National Park Service and is now employed as a Software Engineer at Research Square in Durham, NC.